Brain-Matter-Brain
by poultanzas
Summary: Following a Spartan probe team, as they struggle through a harsh alien landscape, one foot in a future to which they have no guide.
1. Operation

In the darkness, lit by the eerie light of night specs, Sonia could see Thorson and Gomez making their slow, cautious progress around the edge of the main tank of the recyling vats.

The nights on Planet were irregular creatures. Centauri B, Alpha Centauri's weak sister, shone a ghostly light as often as not, turning the solar night into a pale twilight, lit by a lantern no bigger than Nessos.

This was a four-hour night. A rare opportunity for infiltration and intrigue. A cover, under which Thorson and Gomez were affixing shaped charges to the support struts of the recycling vats, under Sonia's tireless eye, and her Spartan marksmanship.

Sonia took a pinch of soil, and brought it to her tongue. It had an ammonia sting. She was lying prone in a tangle of the Planet's native fungus, locked in tar drip slow conflict with a the spearpoints of couch grass, bursting from the hard earth.

~Charges set.

Thorson's voice came over the mindlink. She scratched at the neural jack set into her skull, behind her ear, still unused to the feeling of another's consciousness, another's words, appearing in her own.

~Chopper evac in five, still no hostiles, rendezvous at point Alpha, she sent back.

The great flank of Photus ridge rose up on her right, and she could see the glinting edges of thousands of solar arrays, rising in the darkness, lit by starlight alone.

She spotted something moving, checked it out through the scope of her rifle.

~Shit. Spotted five hostiles. A Security pack, by the looks of it. ETA three minutes.

Security Packs. Mindlinked Security. The idea made Sonia shudder. For their working hours, they worked as a collective consciousness - their minds and bodies linked into a machine-bound gestalt. They moved like a single animal, fought seamless, hitchless, without conscience or fear.

Sonia had fear, but her courage surpassed it. These were just civilians, brain-jacked into a killing machine, who woke from their shifts with only dim, alien memories of their gestalt experience.

Woke to catch the evening pornos on Morgan TV, before going to sleep in their Eezy-Sleep hab-cube, deep in the heart of the warrens of individualism.

Sonia thought the arrangement was the essential paradox of the Morganite worldview. By upholding sink-or-swim individualism, they created the conditions under which, to do anything but sink, Morganites had to sell their lives.

The Colonel called them the nation of whores.

~We've finished up here, what's the word on evac?

Thorson's mind was all hardened Spartan competence, Sonia took strength from it. A viking out of time, Thorson.

The radio rustled.

"Sigma team, this is big bird. There's a flight of interceptors coming in from Morgan Interstellar - we're going to have to hang back until they pass."

Sonia swore. The chopper would be short work for a flight of jets. She put one hand to her collar-mike, keeping her eye firmly fixed on the security pack, that was making its way down the slope of Photus ridge, moving with perfect co-ordination in the shadows of the solar arrays.

"Big bird, I need an eta here, we have company."

"Command expects them to finish their sweep within ten minutes. I'll advise when I get better data."

~Evac's held up - I'll headmap you defensive positions, we're going to have to engage.

Sonia felt Gomez and Thorson nod in the affirmative.

She kept her scope on the security pack. She sketched out a killzone on the team's headmap in a gulley where efluent from the recyclers pooled. Gomez and Thorson moved into position, resting their assault rifles on the broken walls of a pioneer house that had been levelled to make way for the Recycler.

Sonia licked her lips. No matter how many scraps she got into, she never seemed to ease into them.

Overhead, she could hear the roar of the interceptors, sleek black forms flitting across the stars, the edges of their wings lit by the rising moonlight from Nessos.

She set her crosshairs over the first man in the security pack. Pudgy-faced, kindly looking. Eyes like wet oysters, eyes of a weak man in a muscled frame.

~Mark your targets.

Two of the men lit up, blue and red, in Sonia's vision. Blue meant Thorson was gunning for you. Red meant Gomez. Neither suggested a life expectancy to boast of.

She marked hers. Yellow. Yellow kindly-faced man.

~Fire.

The three men came apart, blasted into giblets by they high-V rounds, macerated, legs still in motion. This was the key to fighting a security pack. Overwhelming initial force disorientated the gestalt while it tried to re-distribute its mind.

Sonia put a slug through the fourth, and the fifth ducked behind a piece of broken pipe.

~Gomez, advance to beta point. Thorson, hold.

The pre-prepared overwatch point blinked in the headmap. It had been a contingency, in case they got pinned down. More security would be coming.

~I can hear crying.

Thorson's message came with a sense of the sound. A woman, sobbing. Sonia queried:

~The security pack?

~In position, I have a bead on him, should I engage?

She could almost feel the impact rifle in Gomez's hands as he put his gun on the last surviving member of the security pack.

~She's dropped her rifle. Just curled up in a ball. Don't think she's a threat.

Sonia could feel Gomez's sympathy for the woman.

~Could be a trick.

Sonia cursed. The burden of command. Thorson was just trying to make things easier for her, saying it might be a ruse. He knew the right call. So did she. Didn't mean she liked it.

~Put her down.

She heard the crack as Gomez put her order into action.

The radio crackled into life.

"Evac coming in three, stand by at exit point Sigma."

She spat out her mouthful of earth, then loped into the darkness.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"I thought recyling was a little too green for Wabuda K," rumbled Thorson, over the muffled rattle of the helo.

"If there's a credit in it," shrugged Gomez, a hint of an Earther mexican accent creeping into his voice.

"For all their talk about freedom, and individuality, a Morganite hab cube sure looks a lot like a Hive one." Thorson should know - he had been embedded as a shift worker for a month, preparing the ground for this opperation.

Sonia checked the time-code set in the corner of her eye. She'd had that implant since childhood. The explosives would blow in forty-seven seconds. She fastened the seatbelt.

The landscape flashing by through the helo doors was now fully lit by the pale light of Nessos. The fungus was thick here, growing into tumescent spires and giant, stochiastic spirals.

In the distance, haloed against the breakers of the Great Northern Ocean, were the twisted, alien ruins - strange monoliths clustered like blasphemous fingers, pointed at the sky.

There was a low, resounding rumble in the distance.

Thorson grinned. "Another successful op, chief."

Sonia smiled back, and they bumped fists. In the distance, she could hear the whine of emergency sirens, the howl of interceptor engines warming up.

"We're about to have company, buckle up," came the pilot's voice from the cabin.

Sonia imagined the morganite interceptors climbing into the air like riled hornets, tires screeching off 'crete runwways, turbines blasting into the night.

There was a shrieking roar and a flash in the darkness, as the chopper jinked to one side.

She saw a black shape flit past. It must be one of the interceptors from the flight that had passed them by earlier.

Four holes suddenly appeared in the side of the chopper with deafening percussions.

Gomez whooped, Thorson cursed.

In the darkness, there were a series of blinding flashes, and a something screamed past, fast as a flickering laser, then there was silence.

"In case you were wondering, the Third Air Core just saved our asses," came the voice of the helo pilot.

Sonia made a mental note to find and thank the pilots responsible.


	2. Mess hall

She stepped out of the shower and padded over to the wardrobe, picking out a random assortment of clothes - dungarees, a spun nu-silk wooly jumper.

The cube was cramped, ascetic, but over the years, she had added some personal touches. A real pinewood chair. A few books, one of which was an earth original, salvaged from the wreck of the Unity.

Not very Spartan, tutted Sonia. 'Spartan austerity!' Sonia mouthed to the palm-sized mirror, her face wrinkled into an aproximation of her father's frown.

She imagined Colonel Corazon probably slept in a bare hab cube, no bed. She had met her once, just in passing - an inspection tour of Sonia's division. It had felt like the woman had lightning balled up behind her grey eyes, a tiger in her stride. Everything a Spartan should be.

She stepped out the door into the Hab complex corridor, and made her way towards the mess. Meals were communal, here. She had hated eating on her own in her cover as a security consultant in the Morgan Transportation hab. It felt so furtive. Like a dog that had stolen the meat from its own pack. But, in Morgan Transportation, there was no communal mess. Meals were private, Nutri-meat lumps swimming in TastyFresh gravy, slurped back in the cramped mini-kitchen of a hab cube. Even Hive food, in its grey, numerically-labeled containers, was an improvement over TastyFresh.

The mess hall was raucous, tonight. She had forgotten how good Spartans looked - the high average level of athleticism made plain people striking, attractive people beautiful. Two soldiers, a woman and a man, both augmented, were circling topless in a circle of onlookers, teeth slightly bared, hands held in Spartan Close Stance 5.

Morganites had a taboo about breasts. In Spartan society, they were no more erotic than an ear, or shoulder.

There was a cheer as the woman managed to get some good strikes in, the heels of her right palm blurring out in chopping motions that the man barely fended off. With a shock of recognition, Sonia realized the man was Gunner, an old friend and partner. He was faking being hurt more than he was. Loved his tricks, did Gunner.

The woman pressed her attack. Too young, too wowed by the power of her augmented frame, to see the ruse. She struck with a flurry of blows, brute power that Gunner barely slid away from.

Gunner stumbled back, looking punch drunk.

Sonia could see her shifting into the form for a high kick. The woman wanted to end this one with style. A high kick wasn't even in the Close manual. It was a move you used when you wanted to prove that you were so much stronger than your opponent, you could take them out off-balance.

A contemptuous sort of strike. Spartans always had a cruel streak. Most grew out of it. Some grew into it. Some turned it into precision.

Gunner's face was covered in blood, but she could see from the corners of his eyes that he saw it, and he was laughing.

The woman span into the kick, and her eyes widened as Gunner burst into motion, catching the leg mid-air and bearing her down into the ground.

Two seconds letter, the woman tapped out. Gunner offered his hand, and she spat, furious, before stalking off.

He wiped his face off, and pulled a shirt on, before coming to sit down at Sonia's table. He had a new scar on his face, ugly and twisted.

"Thought I saw you cheering me on."

"Me? I was cheering the girl."

"She's a firecracker, ain't she? Newest member of the team. Saw her in action on the holo-field, brought her in as soon as she was out of the accademy."

"That strike she went for was stupid. Overconfident."

"Shit, and you weren't, at that age? She's a fucking prodigy. She'll level out, then she'll be untouchable."

Sonia thought back to the days when she was in Gunner's squad, and simmilar humiliations at his hands in the ring. The old bastard had probably set the whole situation up to teach the poor girl humility. Always went the extra mile for the talented ones, did Gunner.

"What happened to your face?" Sonia gestured at the scar that punched into one cheek.

"Got hit by some Mortar shrapnel when we were taking Garland Crater from Miriam's people. Hurt like a bitch, but it's healed up pretty, eh?"

"Positive boon to a mug like yours," said Sonia. "You ever heard of this concept called cover?"

"Heard of it. Decided I didn't need it, robust physique like mine."

Gunner's body certainly had enough scars on it to give credit to that idea.

"Gunner you old fucker! I heard you had died!" came the roaring voice of Thorson. He came barrelling over and grabbed the older man in a bear hug.

"Take more than a tac-nuke to finish me," said Gunner.

"You didn't tell me about this," said Sonia, one eyebrow raised.

"Gunner here got caught in a tac-nuke set off by some suicidal whackjob covering the Believer retreat from Lord's Prayer. Everybody thinks he's dead, then two weeks later, he comes driving out of the desert in a nicked Rover, right as rain." Thorson waved one big paw absently at Gunner's scar, "save for that shit on his face."

"Women love scars," said Gunner.

"Keep telling yourself that," said Sonia.

"Wasn't that why you went for him?" asked Thorson, "the stitchwork?"

"Daddy issues and a lack of good sense," grumbled Sonia.

"Well, now the two of you have got me cut down to size, how about we go get shitfaced?" Gunner put his arms around Thorson and Sonia's shoulders, and steered them towards the bar.

"What are we drinking to?"

"Spartan fucking military superiority, and superior fucking booze!" shouted Thorson.


	3. Plans

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"I could really use you guys in our push on Point Rapture - that's going to be some tough bush, those Believers have got it locked down tighter than Miriam's asshole."

"So a great deal tighter than yours," rumbled Thorsen.

"I'd laugh, but I know you're meaning that as a proposition," said Gunner, and poured himself another drink.

"What's the game-plan?" asked Gomez. He had sidled over to join them after the third or fourth round.

Gunner turned serious. "It's some heavy stuff - they got more artillery than you can shake a stick at, and about a battalion of the most hard-arsed Believer pukes they could get their hands on, all holed up in a bunker overlooking the pass. Air core's been hammering fuck out of it for a month now," he shrugged his massive shoulders, "but no joy."

"Can't you just bypass it?" asked Sonia.

"Would love to. Unfortunately, it's controlling the only pass out of Garland's crater, and the way around involves a hundred miles of mindworm-infested fungus jungle. Couple that with Believer guerillas, and you can see why Command wants this done out in the open."

Sonia wondered just how many commander's buttons Gunner had tucked under his shirt-lapel these days. She wouldn't be surprised if the man was Command on this. Spartan commanders liked to lead from the front.

"So what would you want a probe team for?" asked Sonia, eyes narrowing.

"Simple. They have turned Rapture Point into a bunker. A few well-placed viruses, a dash of C4, and a hearty dose of chaos, and we have a crack that we can force. A good Spear of Spartans, we'll take the point in a day. Shit, even if we get bogged down in street-to-street, it beats the fuck out of sitting in dusty trenches, ducking mortar-fire."

"You're that confident of personel superiority?" asked Sonia.

"Sonia!" said Gunner, looking offended, "we're Spartans!"

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The following morning, Sonia woke with a blinding headache, and the sound of the Orders-ticker printing off an assigment slip. It was low-tech stuff - a heat-printer set into the hab-cube wall, that ran off your orders as they came in. Sonia suspected Maintenance didn't replace them because they made such a racket. Ensured soldiers got of bed nice and quick for the action.

"One day off," groaned Sonia.

She lurched over to the printer, and ripped off the ticket. PROJECT CODENAME NIKE, REPORT TO INT. OPS. 7. 1. 15. UNDER COMMAND JAMES HOLCOTT.

James Holcott. Gunner.

"Motherfucker," spat Sonia, and punched the bedframe. Her hand hurt.

She pulled on her work clothes. A grey boiler-suit, woven with silksteel. It was Spartan policy that, even when in a non-frontline assignment, Spartan personel should be ready to defend themselves. The suit was a far cry from the giant, articulated suits of armour frontline troops would go into battle in, but it would stop shrapnel and small caliber bullets.

~Hey Boss, I can feel your hangover from here. You got the orders?  
Thorsen's voice came through the mindlink.

~No rest for the wicked.  
Linked Gomez. The touch of his mind felt like swimming through rancid whisky.

~Boss, what are Gunner's ops usually like?

~Don't talk to me about Gunner. He's dead to me.

Sonia felt Thorson and Gomez chuckle as she stepped into the 7-1-15 command-point, which linked her district into the Command Nexus, the giant network of communications fiber and encrypted tightbeam that held the Spartan millitary machine together.

Gunner gave Sonia a slightly guilty grin, and motioned her to sit down on one of the seats around the round table. Thorsen shouldered in just behind her, before flopping down on a chair.

Sonia spent a moment looking around the familliar surroundings. 'Crete walls, hardened, a holo-map in the middle. It was showing a representation of Rapture Point, walls cut away to show the warren of temples, factories, and houses that burrowed into the ground. A hard nut to crack, no doubt about that.

Harder still for the fact that Believers fought for every inch of ground with berserker furiosity, and there would be traps upon traps in every hangar and hall.

Even with the defenses 'cracked', it would be one hell of a fight. But then, that's what Spartans were for. That's what Spartans dreamed of.

"I can see you're all coming to the same conclusions as I did when I first surveyed this here image." Gunner waved a hand at the holo-map.

"Without a serious leg-up, there's no way Spartan Sixth is taking Rapture Point. These walls are 'crete reinforced with synthmetal. They are manned by well-supplied and highly motivated men and women, who have a great deal of firepower on hand."

"You know the Believers. You know as well as I do that we can't bluff, barter or buy our way into victory here, even if our livers had turned lilly enough to consider the notion."

"But, I won't send the Sixth up against that wall. Maybe we could win, but even if we did, there wouldn't be no point."

"Tensions are heating up between us and those Morganite whores. Outside chance, we'll be at war by the end of the year. If that unhappy circumstance comes to pass, we don't want to be fighting on two fronts. So, we have to take Rapture point quick, pacify the population, then be ready to swing around to show ol' Wabuda K why money is a poor substitute for might."

"I know you. I know you're good. And, I know you know your business better than I do, so I'm going to keep my objectives short, and simple. Put a hole in that curtain wall. Find out as much as you can about any second-layer defense plans, and communicate that intel. Destroy their networks, or at least, compromise them to the extent they won't be any use. That's what the Sixth needs to win. And Sparta needs you to do all this by Proxima-rise, otherwise we're going to be between a rock and a hard place."

Sonia leaned forward. "What if we fail?"

Gunner's look soured.

"There's a plan for that, too."


	4. The Passing of the Old

Sonia wiped an axle-grease stained rag over her face. The red dust that the Former kicked up had formed a mask over her face, broken by the trickles of sweat that ran down her brow.

Former 214, "Passing of the old", or just "The Passing," as the motley crew called the old clanker. It was from Revelations 21:4. Made out of fragments of the crews of five other formers, refugees from the Spartan advance, it was an old machine, rusty and cantankerous, being run by a mongrel team.

They were drilling to a one of Planet's giant aquifers to create a stream that would wind down past Jesus Walks, bringing water to the farms that wrested root vegetables from the arid, rocky soil.

"Praise be!" shouted one of her co-workers, and gave her a wave. She waved back and grinned. She liked it here. The work was tough, but rewarding - when the Former's drillhead bit through the last of the aquifers' rocky shell, a spring would bubble forth that would water the land for generations.

Sonia would daydream about all the earth-plants that would grow in its shallows, willows and lilies, as she cleared the piles of rock and gunge that the bit threw up, or worked with the faulty pressure-gauge at junction 17, that broke every day.

She liked the people, too. Probe missions in Believer society were tough because their communities were so tight. They looked out for eachother, prayed and ate together every day, and if somebody was acting strangely, they would notice. It was only the war, and the tide of refugees fleeing before the Spartan advance, that allowed Sonia to adopt even this menial position without arousing scrutiny.

When the Spartans advanced on a small hamlet constructed to house the workers for several former crews working on the lower slopes of Garland's Crater, Sonia had changed into her believer garb - flowing desert robes, and snuck across Spartan lines to join the refugee column.

Even in this disoriented, rag-tag column, she'd needed an iron-tight backstory.

The sun was setting over the cluster of 'fabs the former team were living in while they were drilling. Simple, spartan habs, with a chapel facing east over the valley. It was almost time for prayer.

Sonia had thought she would hate praying three times a day, but it had grown on her. Sitting together, in silence, taking stock. It was the same feeling of peace she got from reassembling her Impact rifle in Basic. Except, while the Spartan drill was between Sonia and her weapon, the prayer ceremony was with the big-hearted men and women of the former crew.

She even loved the singing, and although she found the words oddly lifeless, she could appreciate the joy that came to her crewmate's eyes as they belted out the hymns, and the beauty of their voices in harmony.

Thorson grinned at her as he finished wrestling a new bit into the secondary augur. He also enjoyed manual labour.

~Feels nice giving something back, linked Gomez.

That was one of the things about the mind-link that Sonia didn't like. The team was always on the same page. It was an incredible edge in combat - but it troubled her that, when it came down to it, did she really know her thoughts were hers? Did she like working in the Former crew, or did Thorson and Gomez, with her own inclinations just being swept along?

She shelved that line of thought. She was on mission, and focus was important. There would be time for introspection later.

But, the trouble was, being among Believers made you feel introspective. Theirs was the life of the soul, the careful inner journey, turning inwards away from the world.

She walked over to the solar pump, where a plastic jug overflowed with water that ran into a muddy pool, and poured some over her face, before wiping off the sweat and grime.

Overhead, she could see the contrails of needlejets. The Spartans had won air superiority early, and now they roamed the skies uncontested; flights of Thunderflash tacticals cut clean lines through the evening sky, on their way to deliver the fires of hell to their targets.

Sonia expected that soon, the order would come for the Former crew to retreat to Rapture Point. She had seen advance projection in Ops, and although Spartan battle doctrine didn't deal in certainty, it was obvious that the Believer line wasn't going to hold for more than a few days.

The Spartan Air Core had cut the Believer supply lines, so their forces were reduced to piecemeal guerilla actions, random and uncoordinated raids against well-prepared positions.

The day before she had left Spartan territory, the 15th Mechanized had cut off a battle-group of Believer forces that had been holding a salient west of Rapture Point. The flashes of artillery and Gatling lasers strobed across the clouds to the North, as the beleaguered fanatics held their desperate last stand, doubtless hungry and exhausted, sustained by little more than faith.

It was a death-blow, leaving some of the Believer's best forces surrounded and without lines of supply or communication. The entire front would fold, and Spartan rovers would come tearing through the farmlands.

The leather-faced old lady beamed at Sonia as she ladelled stew into Sonia's bowl. Believer food was delicious, full of spice and warmth, each bowl of stew a labour of love.

They sat and said grace, a simple prayer for courage in the face of hardship. They held hands around the table - Sonia's clasped in the strong, calloused hand of the old lady who had served her soup on her right, and the sweet young man who made big eyes at her and blushed easily on her left. Sonia appreciated the sentiment. If there was one thing worth praying for, it was courage. It was the Spartan guiding ideal - that with sufficient courage, anything can be achieved.

It was the central pillar of Spartan society, that courage should be rewarded, fostered, bred. Discipline and courage, hand in hand, two sides of the same coin.

The Former crew had courage. A softer kind than that Sonia was used to, but courage all the same. They saw the flash of needlejet wings catching the sun in blue skies, knew that defeat was coming, and yet, still bent their backs to labour without fear or complaint. They praised God, even though Sonia couldn't help but feel, if there was a God - he had deserted the Believers.

A faith born in ancient history in a part of an abandoned earth that, even before the Unity took to the skies, was a radioactive waste, took a special sort of strength to hold under Alpha Centauri's three alien suns.

The belief that Jerusalem could be built again on the fungal steppes of a world that was the most far-flung place humans had ever called home, the most harsh and unforgiving, a place where the earliest colonists had to wear masks to augment the sparse oxygen that blew sultry across an alien land that produced the Mind Worms, predators that came from nothing, sowing madness and horror, taking colonists by their thousands as their seedbeds.

A place where fungal towers rose into the sky, billowing with swarms of the Locusts of Chiron, those howling clouds of insectile alien creatures that travelled like a pestilent wind, the survivors of which often survived in body only.

Spartan society gave clean deaths to these blank eyed droolers.

It was a harsh land, a land in which the Spartan ethos of strength as virtue made sense. But the idea of a loving, forgiving God? How did that make sense to these people? They were twice refugees, first from Earth, then from the Believer lands ravaged by the Spartan war machine.

Perhaps they saw themselves as the Israelites in exile, thought Sonia. Wandering into a future that looked like a cruel mockery of any promised land - a future where humanity itself was a small and unimportant side-note, watched over by machines of loving grace and arctic, alien logic.

Her neural jack itched. They weren't common in Believer society, so the old bolt-like jack had been replaced by one that sat under the skin. They had to remove more of her skull to make space.

Sonia had been shocked to find, reading Miriam Godwinson's Collected Sermons, that many of her own anxieties about the inexorable march of progress were being given voice.

What place had the warrior, in a future of melded minds and machine sentience? Was a world of grafted and macerated minds, wetware, cities in hock to alien intelligences, as surely bound as heart to pacemaker, what she was fighting for? What place had the human, in such a future?


End file.
